After winning the Academy Award for best animated feature Ratatouille/The Incredibles director Brad Bird talked to The Hollywood Reporter about his next film, his first foray into live action, an adaptation of James Dalessandro‘s 1906, about the San Francisco Earthquake:

“At the time, Chinatown was coexisting with the Barbary Coast, which was like the Wild Wild West, and at the same time Nob Hill had the upper class. It was a time between two centuries. You had horses and cars existing simultaneously. It’s just a volatile mix of things and then you throw in an earthquake. I mean, come on, if that doesn’t buy popcorn …”

Rumor has it that Bird will direct 1906 either as the first film at new live-action division of Pixar or possibly part of a collboration between Pixar and a live action production comapny (possibly Disney owned), where Pixar would be handling the majority of the computer generated imagery. No timetable has been leaked, but Bird had been working on 1906 for a couple years before he got sidetraked with Rataouille.